Podcast: ‘We Urgently Need a Global Vision’

In a turbulent period in European history, and beyond, we are delighted to draw on the sage input of the former Irish ambassador to Russia, poet Philip McDonagh, who also worked for a long period on the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. He explores the possibilities for a lasting, inclusive peace between Russia and Ukraine. He also laments the expansion in military investment in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, calling for a new global vision to contend with the troubles of our time.

Philip McDonagh discusses the role of rhetoric in international politics, going all the way back to Aristotle and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. A key concept, in his view, is a right to dissent: he considers this a vital component to democracy that is under threat across the world today. He refers explicitly to the lack of debate around the ‘triple lock’ on the Irish government’s ability to commit Irish troops to peace-keeping operations.

Philip McDonagh worked extensively on the Good Friday Agreement as political counsellor to the Irish embassy in London, and was subsequently involved in various initiatives to bring lessons from this to other conflict zones, including India-Pakistan, India-Sri Lanka and Korea. The most important lesson he draws from these negotiations is the need to reframe the problem so that ‘all sides can see a better future.’

He regards ‘small, potted statements on X’ as a huge impediment to diplomacy, considering this part of a wider cultural disaster that we are experiencing with the information environment. He would be delighted to advise Michael Martin before his visit to the White House, referring to the continued relevance of the OSCE, which offers a framework that includes the United States and the Russian Federation for peace-keeping and monitoring.

As Irish ambassador in Moscow he conducted high level negotiations with Russian officials, and found their diplomatic service to be highly professional. He recalls ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev saying to him that Ireland could reconcile Russia and the United States because of our friendship with the Americans, and what he thought would be our empathy with a Russian perspective.

He refers to fears on the Russian side of entering negotiations, given the stated objectives of European sanctions has been to collapse the Russian economy. He maintains that they would see a pattern of discrediting or criminalising the Russian leadership precisely in order to prevent negotiations.

Russia is part of Europe he argues, pointing to the geographic definition of the continent extending to the Urals, and pointing to the great Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pushkin, as well as shared Christian and Muslim traditions. He refers to an unhelpful cancellation of Russian culture in parts of Eastern Europe in particular.

Philip McDonagh says that the major task of diplomacy is to attempt to reconcile the interests of both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Notably, the potential expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Georgia was a source of serious discontent in Russia prior to the outbreak of the war.

He takes a global perspective on the need to resolve the European conflict, arguing it is immoral for us to commit to spending huge sums of money on weapons, when so many around the world are starving. We need a methodology or framework to think about the future he argues – new spaces led by civil society. This requires a morally serious form of multilateralism he says, maintaining that to describe this as a planetary emergency is realistic.

He concludes with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said: ‘we must have the courage to believe in a future that is not visible in the alternatives of the present. That’s the future we have to enable with our political choices.’